Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/532

 506 PENTATEUCH Wette s ideas and started from the ground that he had conquered, although they advanced beyond him to a much more definite and better established position, and were also diametrically opposed to him in one most important point, of which we shall have more to say presently. 1 Positive But meantime a reaction was rising which sought to literary direct criticism towards positive rather than negative re- sm suits. The chief representatives of this positive criticism, which now took up a distinct attitude of opposition to the negative criticism of De Wette, were Bleek, Ewald, and Movers. By giving up certain parts of the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy, they thought themselves able to vindicate certain other parts as beyond doubt genuinely Mosaic, just in the same way as they threw over the Davidic authorship of certain psalms in order to strengthen the claim of others to bear his name. The procedure by which particular ancient hymns or laws were sifted out from the Psalter or the Pentateuch had some resemblance to the decretum absolutum of theology ; but up to a certain point the reaction was in the right. The youthful De Wette and his followers had really gone too far in applying the same measure to all parts of the Pentateuch, and had been satisfied with a very inadequate insight into its composi tion and the relation of its parts. Historical criticism had hurried on too fast, and literary criticism had now to overtake it. De Wette himself felt the necessity for this, and from the year 1817 onwards the year of the first edi tion of his Einleiturtfj he took an active and useful part in the solution of the problems of Pentateuchal analysis. The fragmentary hypothesis was now superseded ; the con nexion of the Elohist of Genesis with the legislation of the middle books w T as clearly recognized ; and the book of Joshua was included as the conclusion of the Pentateuch. The closely-knit connexion and regular structure of the narrative of the Elohist impressed the critics ; it seemed to supply the skeleton which had been clothed with flesh and blood by the Jehovist, in whose contributions there w r as no such obvious conformity to a plan. From all this it was naturally concluded that the Elohist had written the Grundschrift or primary narrative, which lay before the Jehovist and was supplemented by him (&quot; Supplementary Hypothesis &quot;). 2 Hupfeld. This view remained dominant till Hupfeld in 1853 pub lished his investigations on The Sources of Genesis and the Method of their Composition. Hupfeld denied that the Jehovist followed the context of the Elohistic narrative, merely supplementing it by additions of his own. He pointed out that such Elohistic passages in Genesis as clearly have undergone a Jehovistic redaction (e.g., chaps. xx., xxi., xxii.) belong to a different Elohist from the author of Gen. i. Thus he distinguished three independent sources in Genesis, and he assumed further, somewhat inconse- quently, that no one of them had anything to do with the others till a fourth and later writer wove them all together into a single whole. This assumption was corrected by Noldeke. Noldeke, who showed that the second Elohist is preserved only in extracts embodied in the Jehovistic book, that the Jehovist and second Elohist form one whole and the Grundschrift another, and that thus, in spite of Hupfeld s discovery, the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy being excluded) was still to be regarded as made up of two great layers. Noldeke had also the honour of having been the first to 1 H. Leo, Vorlesunyen uber die Geschichte des jiidischen Staat.s, Berlin, 1828 ; C. P. W. Gramherg, Kritische Geschichte der Religion s- ideen des A.T., Berlin, 1829-30 ; P. v. Bohlen, Die Genesis, Konigs- berg, 1835 ; W. Vatke, Biblische Thcoloyie, Berlin, 1835 ; J. F. L. George, Die iilterenj ddischen Feste, Berlin, 1835. 2 Bleek, in Rosenmiiller s Itepertorium, 1822, and in Stud, und Krit., 1831 ; Ewald, Stud. u. Krit., 1831 ; Tuch, Kommentar itb. d. Genesis, Halle, 1838 ; especially De Wette in the various editions of his ElnUitung. trace in detail how the Elohistic Grundschrift runs through the whole Hexateuch, and of having described with masterly hand the peculiar and inflexible type of its ideas and language. In this task he was aided by the commentary of Knobel, whose industry furnished very valuable materials for men of judgment to work upon. 3 Thus the investigation into the composition of the Penta teuch had reached a point of rest and a provisional con clusion. The results may be thus summarized. The five books of Moses with Joshua form one whole ; and it is not the death of Moses but the conquest of the promised land which forms the true close of the history of the patriarchal age, the exodus, and the wanderings in the wilderness ; it is therefore more correct to speak of the Hexateuch than of The the Pentateuch. From this whole it is most easy to detach Hexa the book of Deuteronomy, and accordingly its independence teuc * was very early recognized. Of the other elements, that which has the most marked individuality is the work of the Elohist, which we shall in the sequel call the Priestly The Code. This too, like Deuteronomy, is a law-book, but it Pnes has an historical setting. Its main stock is Leviticus, with ( ~ c the cognate parts of the adjacent books, Exod. xxv.-xl. (except chaps, xxxii.-xxxiv.) and Num. i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.- xxxvi. (with some inconsiderable exceptions). This law- book does not, like Deuteronomy, embrace precepts for civil life, but is confined to affairs of worship, and mainly to the esoteric aspect of public worship, that is, to such points as belonged to the function of the priests as distinguished from the worshipping people. The legal contents of the Code are supported on a scaffolding of history, which, however, belongs to the literary form rather than to the substance of the work. It is only where some point of legal interest is involved that the narrative acquires any fulness, as it does in the book of Genesis in connexion with the three preparatory stages of the Mosaic covenant attached to the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Generally speaking, the historical thread is very thin, and often (Gen. v., xi.) it becomes a mere genealogical line, on which is hung a continuous chronology carried on from the creation to the exodus. The Priestly Code is charac terized by a marked predilection for numbers and measures, for arrangement (titles to sections) and formality of scheme, by the poverty and inflexibility of its language, by standing repetitions of certain expressions and phrases such as are not elsewhere found in old Hebrew. Thus its distinguish ing marks are very pronounced, and can always be recog nized without difficulty. If now Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code are successively subtracted from our present Pentateuch the Jehovistic history -book remains, distin- Jeho guished from both the others by the fact that it is essentially vistil narrative and not law, and by the pleasure it takes in bringing out details of the historical tradition, so that individual points of the story receive full justice and are not sacrificed to the interests of the general plan. The patriarchal history belongs almost entirely to this docu ment, and forms the most characteristic part of it ; here that history forms no mere epitomized introduction to more important matter, as in the Priestly Code, but is treated in all fulness as a subject of first-rate importance. Legis lative elements are incorporated in the Jehovistic narrative only at one point, where they naturally fall into the his torical context, viz., in connexion with the law-giving on Sinai (Exod. xx.-xxiii., xxxiv.). These, then, are the three main component parts of the Hexateuch Deuteronomy, the Priestly Code, and the Jehovist. But the Jehovist has woven together in his history -book two sources, one of which uses the name 3 Knohel, Die Genesis crklart (Leipsic, 1852), Exodus und Leviticus (1857), Numeri, Deuteron., und Josua(l86l) ; Noldeke, Untersuchungen zur Kritikdcs A.T. (Kiel, 1869).